Atlanta went to full digital signal this weekend. Nothing will work using standard analog PVR cards. Have to use DTA adapters with irblasters.

Interesting that they fully eliminated the analog channels. I suspect similar things will happen in this area sometime over the next 6-18 months.

Are they leaving any of the QAM channels in the clear, or are they all encrypted? You can test by doing a channel scan from any TV that has a digital tuner. I heard from someone that they are lobbying heavily to allow them to also encrypt channels that original from OTA stations.

_________________Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

I get "upgraded" (Bend over, we're going to "upgrade" you! Again!) on the 27th here in the Boston 'burbs.

To "improve" our service Comcast is going to encrypt all the current clear QAM channels (mostly OTA, shopping channels and the like) and make me use either a crappy DTA converter or "upgrade" to their crappy digital cable box and pay an extra $30/month. I'd call that the kind of classic customer abuse than we've come to know and dread from Comcast.

My response was to buy an OTA antenna and look into the price effect of just keeping the internet feed and dropping their TV service altogether. (They may actually charge _more_ for just internet. WTH!). With the antenna I lose the NH PTV stations, WBIN, NECN, CMT, SPEED, HSN, QVC, ShopNBC, community access stations, some Spanish language stations, but pick up several things that don't come across the cable feed. Of that list the NH stations (NHPTV, WBIN) and maybe NECN are the only real losses.

I hear ya. I "cut the cord" a couple of years ago when I realized I was paying almost $100/mo. for Discovery and Comedy channels. (I got a whole bunch of other crap of course, but never watched it.) I put an antenna in my attic space and I get shows from 40 miles away (Sutro Tower in S.F.). This digital modulation stuff is one step away from magic -- the analog "quality" would resemble Gaussian noise at that distance, and with the antenna inside my attic.

I may have to get DirecTV soon, tho. I own an interest in an internet provider and the company is now delivering DirecTV over fiber-to-the-home. The settop box is about two generations old but it would be interesting to play with. (No firewire, of course)

Switching the box over to the antenna only meant killing one recurring recording rule for "Live from Daryl's House" and that I can get on-line. Everything else on the schedule still comes through OTA.

I need to figure out the broadband pricing stuff at some point, and if it's not actually going to cost more, tell Comcast that 50+ channels of home shopping, infomercials, "reality tv", religious and foreign language programming, and other assorted slop that I don't want is not a service.

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